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16 The Coal Globe It sits by my grandmother’s black Bible on her bedside table with the water glass that holds her uppers. I sneak in, having night sweats and insomnia at eleven, to hear the soft flutter of her breath. She seems harmless, asleep beside the glass-trapped scene of a small town where wagons wait at mud curbs, and miners hold their buckets under sooty arms before “Old Logan,” mine No. 37. A black sun locks up the sky. I crouch in the L-shape of her bed and table, as if under a protecting arm. Like a small dream caught in a larger one, the baseball-sized orb glitters, coal dust lifting, when I shake it. Sun is sifted in the narrow street. Again miners’ faces feel light. Horses turn warm brown, the mineshaft shrinks before bright rays. What looked like dull hydrants scattered on walkways become children waiting for fathers and uncles. Everything’s clean, free, for the second. Then motes begin landing again, to re-freeze the day under black snow. ...

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